In EP 0,876,963 of Triadu and Boulot such a box is shown. It has a rectangular floor and side and end walls that extend perpendicularly up from respective edges of the floor. One of the walls has a cutout that can be closed by a movable door flap. During transport and storage, the cutout is closed by the flap, but for stocking purposes the flap is hinged down so is that a user can reach into the box and retrieve items in it, even when the box is part of a stack of such boxes, that is otherwise upwardly closed by the overlying box. The difference between “stacking” and “nesting” is that when two boxes are stacked, the floor of the upper box sits on and is supported by the upper edge of the lower box, but when they are nested the floor of the upper box is recessed down in the lower box and may indeed even sit on the floor of the lower box.
A box according to EP 0,876,963 cannot be nested when empty so as to take up less space when being shipped back to the supplier. In addition the cutout is only big enough to allow removal through it of items that are substantially smaller than the end wall formed with the cutout. Thus such a box cannot be used for stocking large items. Finally, the cutout in one wall of the box makes it structurally somewhat less rugged, limiting how many of these boxes can be stacked atop one another and also limiting how much weight such a box can hold without deforming.
In order for boxes to be nestable, they must typically be formed with upwardly flaring walls so that they have a downwardly tapering shape. With enough taper, the boxes can be nested very tightly, with their floors literally resting directly one atop the other. The problem is that with increasing taper the boxes lose vertical strength, that is their side walls can withstand lesser vertical loads. Furthermore the required interfitting often necessitates a wall structure that is not very strong in general.
For a box to be both nestable and stackable, it is typically formed such that one side wall is generally complementary to but oppositely shaped from the opposite side wall. Thus one side wall can have two vertical ridges and the other one central ridge. When the two vertical ridges of one box are aligned with the one central ridge of an underlying box, the boxes nest, but when the two ridges on one side and the single ridges on the other side are vertically aligned, the boxes stack.